In July, 1621, Governor William Bradford decided to send a deputation to Pokanoket, to “discover the country,” to “continue the league of peace and friendship” which had been entered into a few months previous at Plymouth, and to procure corn for planting. Provided with gifts, a horseman’s laced coat of red cotton and a chain, Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins set out from Plymouth on Monday, July 2d, having for a guide Tisquantum, or Squanto, the friendly Indian whose name appears so conspicuously in the early annals of Plymouth. The trail followed led the travellers through Titicut in the north-west part of Middleborough, where they spent the night, to Taunton, thence to Mattapoiset (South Swansea) and from there to Kickemuit in the easterly part of Warren. Undoubtedly the Kickemuit River was crossed at a wading-place, often alluded to in the early records of Warren, which was at a point a little north of the present Child Street bridge. From Kickemuit they continued on to Sowams in the western part of the town on the shores of the Warren River, then known as the Sowams River. There seems little reason to doubt that, in going from Kickemuit to Sowams, they followed a winding trail leading along what now constitutes the Kickemuit Road, and Market Street in Warren, as, in 1621, the westerly portion of Child Street[7] was a thick swamp. This visit of Winslow and Hopkins was the second paid by white men to Rhode Island, the first visit having been made by Verazzano and his companions nearly a century before. Winslow’s party arrived at Sowams on the afternoon of July 4th, but Massasoit proved to be absent from home. Messengers were immediately dispatched after him, and he shortly appeared being greeted by a discharge of his white visitors’ guns. He welcomed the Englishmen cordially and invited them into his wigwam, where they delivered a lengthy message from Governor Bradford and presented the gifts they had brought with them. The sachem at once donned the coat and hung the chain about his neck. “He was not a little proud,” says Winslow, “to behold himself; and his men also to see their king so bravely attired.” In answer to the Governor’s message Massasoit made a long speech in which he mentioned some thirty different places over which he exercised jurisdiction, and promised that his people should bring their skins to the English. At the close of the speech he offered his guests tobacco and then “fell to discoursing” of England, King James, and the French against whom he seemed to feel a particular aversion. “Late it grew,” states Winslow in his narrative of this journey to Pokanoket, “but victuals he offered none: for indeed he had not any; being he came so newly home, so we desired to go to rest.”